9. Switzerland & Italy
LAUSANNE
Not unusually, during my coach journey I am hungover and desperate for the toilet. But even that doesn't detract from the incroyable view out of the window. Autumnal forests of orange and yellow trees, rivers glinting with silver sunlight and little Bavarian-style villages with pointy church steeples nestle in the folds of hills. The blue sky above it feels further away than usual, like Switzerland has a high ceiling. It's a picturesque scene and reminds me of an Alpen box; suddenly I realise where that name comes from. At exactly that moment we pass a Schwarz shop, and I wonder if I'll have anything vaguely interesting or original to say about this place if it continues to embody our few stereotyped images of Switzerland so accurately.
En route I have to double check with my host that they speak French in Lausanne. I was pretty sure they did, but there were loads of damned Germans on the coach and it threw me off! He tells me that they do but it sounds funny. NGL I didn’t notice any difference (aside from one septante) during the whole of my stay and felt ashamed. All packaging, signs and adverts are written in German as well as French though. I did notice that.
I actually feel disappointed when I arrive, the journey was so enjoyable. It was only 3 ½ hours from Lyon - including a stop in Geneva!
However my spirits soon perk back up again as I descends from the Flixbus and begin to strut through this new city, feeling further from Marseille than ever. Switzerland’s wealth is immediately evident: there’s great infrastructure, everything is very clean and there are tonnes of expensive shops. My contact divulged the cost of his rent, which was vachement expensive too. The buildings here remind me of Bavaria (although not the one that there's a picture of to the right... keeping you on your toes xo). I visit the Cathedral and the big fancy bibliothèque; where I use the posh toilettes and eat a small plastic box of cuterly-less couscous that I bought from a supermarket using my fingers. Good times. Then I go to the mudac. This I highly recommend. As it was the Lausanne marathon, I ended up on a free tour with just one other lady. Our guide explained in great detail the focus of the exhibition; how each ancient Chinese artefact relates to the role of women during the époque - which unfortunately I failed to grasp the dates of. So by the end I know a lot about the role of women in Chinese society at some point in the past, I’m afraid I can’t be any more specific.
Then I go to the other temporary exposition which is on trainers. I spend about half an hour watching a documentary on the humble trainer’s ascension to iconic significance thanks to hip hop artists. As I leave, I thank my former self for creating this blog and providing a suitable smug-humble platform for this self-congratulatory auto-documentation. Esoteric learning in the mudac B)
On Monday morning I find myself in a cemetery. I must confess, I am less of a fan of this graveyard than I am of most. It is unmercifully uniform, with plenty of space for each tasteful, well-maintained grave. It is neat and organised and reflects the city. It's the equivalent of one of those "gardens" which is designed as such and thus heavily policed (@Versailles); versus a Real Life® garden with a bit of this 'n' that and flowerbeds that don't look like they've been carved out using a set square... I prefer the latter but obvs that’s just little old me’s preference x
Having hastily removed myself from the Swiss hilltop, I begin a new game. They obey zebra crossings excessively diligently here, so I can just launch myself into the road and be sure a car 100m away will already have start breaking. The challenge becomes trying to catch them out, so I spend a happy few hours flinging myself into Swiss roads at random. I blame #NMM.
TURIN
My ears pop violently and I receive a roam like you're at home text; I'm back in the EU. For the
first half of my journey I'm one of maybe five on the coach. It's dark and
raining; I foetus-position myself over two seats, whack Verdi's Requiem on my Bluetooth headphones (that's right! #techy) and feel
calm and cocooned; lazily torn between wanting this highly enjoyable journey to
last longer and anticipating my arrival in a new city and different country.
From Chamonix to Turin, however, my headphones have died and the man behind me is
blabbering on his phone the entire journey, leaving very little time for his interlocuteur.trice
to reply to anything. I estime that that makes him an intralocuteur. However smug I am with my new word, his abundant guffaws (presumably at his own jokes) are punchable and I just can't wait to step onto
that Italian tarmac.
Atterie, and contentedly installée in a bar, I try fernet with ice which is a traditional drink in the region. It makes me gag at first and then I really like... Turino has another traditional drink called bicerin which I didn’t get a chance to try. The name made it sound horrible to me, but I just Googled it and it doesn’t contain asphalt, as I’d feared. I now realise I was mixing it up with bitumen.
While getting a midnight slice of pizza from a van (a façon de gastronomie that the UK really needs to consider adopting), a man starts chatting with us and says he had arrived in Italy earlier in the week, strapped to the bottom of a van coming from Morocco. I was really shocked, but my friend says these kinds of stories are common in Turin.
The building of the flat where we sleep is beautiful, with solid-feeling tiled floors, large rooms and high ceilings. However, the interior resembles a squat (there is no running water and inintelligent graffiti all over the walls). Before I've even asked, I'm assured it is legitimately rented; that this is "just Turino". I can't help it, I'm sorry; the obnoxious expression shabby chic springs to mind.
The next day I am given a guided tour of the city. I can't profess many names of places stuck... but we did go to one of the biggest markets in Europe! It was so big, man. And there were loads of veggies I've never seen in my life before - including teeny baby courgettes. Mimi! :3 The big famous dome/tower/museum is amazing (the Mole), but tragically closed on a Tuesday (hashtag NMT to join the Revolution). The city is built around a three-way confluence of the rivers Po, Dora Riparia and Stura di Lanzo. The thing I found most frappant was how wide the streets were - they're 'uge! It makes the city feel grand (it is a former capital city TBF) and spacious and the buildings remind me of France - all flat-fronted with rows of shuttered windows.
Here, the rules of the road are there are no rules. I witnessed many a car brazenly ploughing through red lights (including my very own friend slash chauffeur). There are also trams in the
city that look like a retro money-making scheme aimed at tourists but are genuinely just
what the trams look like. They must be ancient; it felt kinda risqué (and also quite bumpy) to
ride ‘em.
It was scary being in a country where I spoke none of the language whatsoever. I felt embarrassed when my host's grandparents asked if I spoke Piedmontese (the dialect) and I had to confess that I didn't even speak any Italian. Well, that's not strictly true, of course I know un tas de swear words, but I didn't reckon it'd improve my rep' with the g'parents by calling them teste di cazzo. Anyway. My journey concluded with a delightfully scenic dive home in a (shockhorror) Blablacar (during which the picture above was taken). It was suitably terrifying careering round violent bends in the mountainous roads on Halloween. Spoopy!
Atterie, and contentedly installée in a bar, I try fernet with ice which is a traditional drink in the region. It makes me gag at first and then I really like... Turino has another traditional drink called bicerin which I didn’t get a chance to try. The name made it sound horrible to me, but I just Googled it and it doesn’t contain asphalt, as I’d feared. I now realise I was mixing it up with bitumen.
While getting a midnight slice of pizza from a van (a façon de gastronomie that the UK really needs to consider adopting), a man starts chatting with us and says he had arrived in Italy earlier in the week, strapped to the bottom of a van coming from Morocco. I was really shocked, but my friend says these kinds of stories are common in Turin.
The building of the flat where we sleep is beautiful, with solid-feeling tiled floors, large rooms and high ceilings. However, the interior resembles a squat (there is no running water and inintelligent graffiti all over the walls). Before I've even asked, I'm assured it is legitimately rented; that this is "just Turino". I can't help it, I'm sorry; the obnoxious expression shabby chic springs to mind.
The next day I am given a guided tour of the city. I can't profess many names of places stuck... but we did go to one of the biggest markets in Europe! It was so big, man. And there were loads of veggies I've never seen in my life before - including teeny baby courgettes. Mimi! :3 The big famous dome/tower/museum is amazing (the Mole), but tragically closed on a Tuesday (hashtag NMT to join the Revolution). The city is built around a three-way confluence of the rivers Po, Dora Riparia and Stura di Lanzo. The thing I found most frappant was how wide the streets were - they're 'uge! It makes the city feel grand (it is a former capital city TBF) and spacious and the buildings remind me of France - all flat-fronted with rows of shuttered windows.
It was scary being in a country where I spoke none of the language whatsoever. I felt embarrassed when my host's grandparents asked if I spoke Piedmontese (the dialect) and I had to confess that I didn't even speak any Italian. Well, that's not strictly true, of course I know un tas de swear words, but I didn't reckon it'd improve my rep' with the g'parents by calling them teste di cazzo. Anyway. My journey concluded with a delightfully scenic dive home in a (shockhorror) Blablacar (during which the picture above was taken). It was suitably terrifying careering round violent bends in the mountainous roads on Halloween. Spoopy!
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